1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a printing apparatus such as an ink jet printer and a printing method.
2. Related Art
In the past, there was a known printing apparatus including a line head in which a plurality of heads with a plurality of print elements are arranged substantially in series in a sub-scanning direction and an overlapping section where two heads overlap with each other is formed in a connection region of the heads, as disclosed in JP-A-5-57965, JP-A-2004-50445, and JP-A-2006-224569.
More specifically, in the printing apparatus disclosed in JP-A-5-57965, the number of print elements of one head is gradually decreased in the overlapping section and the number of print elements of the other head is gradually increased in the overlapping section.
In the printing apparatus disclosed in JP-A-2004-50445, the driving positions of the printing elements of one head and the other head are configured to be switched in the overlapping section upon the driving the printing elements.
In the printing apparatus disclosed in JP-A-2006-224569, the dither size and the position of the overlapping section are configured to be adjusted.
In these known techniques, two or more heads forming the overlapping section are different from each other in characteristics such as landing precision, a landing size, and assembly precision. Therefore, when characters or line images are printed by the overlapping section, deterioration in the image quality cannot be avoided, compared with the image quality achieved when the same heads print the characters or the line images.